Reading Journal: Burial Rites

Hannah Kent's first novel, Burial Rites, was published this month by Little, Brown. I don't remember reading an early review or putting it on my holds list, but I must've done both, because it showed up in my box last Wednesday.

Once I had a chance to flip through it, I decided I wasn't going to like it. It's a fictionalized account of the months leading up to the 1830 beheading of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last person ever to be executed in Iceland. It uses available documentary evidence to provide the rough outline of a detailed story purporting to explain the circumstances surrounding Agnes's crime, the murder of the landowner for whom she worked as a servant. Using the character of a priest to draw out the story, Kent provides a fairly explicit and yet hum-drum view of the lives of poor women in nineteenth-century Iceland, which, of course, were no less difficult than the lives of poor women in any other part of the world in that era.

In other words, the conceit is identical to that used by Margaret Atwood in the brilliant Alias Grace, the story of a 19th-century Canadian servant sentenced to death for murdering her master. It's pretty audacious to blatantly imitate one of our greatest living authors, and I expected Kent to suffer in comparison.

I shall now eat my words.  

Kent's writing has a ways to go before she reaches Atwoodian levels of virtuosity, but her story telling instincts more than make up for it. In any case, Kent's straight-forward, one might say plain, style does service to her characters, people who, though literate and intelligent, live lives much too difficult and exhausting to engage in artistic pursuits that don't serve some useful purpose on the farm.

I found myself drawn into the details of running a farm in pre-Industrial Revolution Iceland, a climate an outsider might find much too forbidding to be worth the effort. From the window pane made of a pig bladder to the sleeping arrangements in the badstofa, Kent, herself an Australian, provides realistic but not excessive detail of what it meant to live and farm in a region where the weather can kill you 9 months out of the year.

And, more urgently, Kent tells the story that could belong to any poor woman servant from any era, including our own, subject to the whims of her "betters" and unable to fully act on her own desires and needs. The danger of stories like Burial Rites and Alias Grace is the temptation to classify these stories exclusively as horrors from the past. "That doesn't happen now," we tell ourselves. Yet of course it does. The bare fact of poverty in the 21st-century United States puts one at risk of victimization and exploitation; the risks for poor women are double. So when we read novels like Burial Rites, although it's oh so tempting to classify it merely as historical fiction, Agnes herself begs us to examine our own world in search of injustice and exploitation that, though perhaps better camouflaged, is no less prevalent. This is where Kent's novel truly succeeds.

An Open Letter to Minneha Elementary School Students and Staff

What a way to start the school year! You enter your classrooms excited to begin another year, and what do you get? A "scandal" created by people who don't seem to understand the purpose of education in general, let alone the mission of Minneha Core Knowledge Magnet in particular.

I'm sorry you had to take down your display depicting the Five Pillars of Islam. I hope you'll be able to replace it soon. You know better than many adults that learning about different religions is a great way to move toward a peaceful world. You know that pretending religion doesn't exist is a prescription for ignorance and bigotry later in life. You know that learning about a religion is not the same thing as believing. And your teachers know that the Supreme Court has upheld the right of public schools to provide education about religion at the same time that it rightly prohibits proselytizing in McCollum v Board of Education (1948) and in School District of Abington Township v Schempp (1963).  

So when it's time to do your unit on Islam later this fall, just like when you do your units on Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism, don't let the bullies intimidate you from learning. They're afraid because they don't know any better. You can be brave because you have knowledge.

A Profound Metaphor of Significant Significance (but mainly dog training)

My dad came over this morning to do something mysterious to my stereo to make the classical station in Hutch come in more clearly. (And by "mysterious," I mean he stuck a piece of flexible, rubber-coated wire in the antenna port. The wire has a name, but I've already forgotten. Dad would want me to tell you that you should NEVER attach a wire coat hanger to your stereo. Not that I would ever consider that. Ahem.)

So, knowing that we were about to have company, I did what I always do to make Brewster more comfortable with visitors. The dogs got their harnesses on, and we went out for a mini-walk so we could meet Dad outside. Brewster is much happier to meet people outside on neutral ground than to have them come into his house. Bertie is always happy to meet new people so she runs up first to perform her official function as the Chez Furry Pants Welcoming Committee. (Obviously this special service is only for guests we already know are dog people and won't mind slobbery dog tongue.) Then in theory Brewster and I follow, Brewster gets to meet the guest if he's feeling brave enough, and then we follow the guest into the house so Brew doesn't feel like he's being chased. 

When Dad came by a couple of weeks ago, we did not do this very well. Or rather, I did not do it very well. Bertie ran up to Dad, and I held Brewster back to see how he would react. In the process of holding him back, I pulled back on his leash, putting tension on it. And there was the mistake.

The amount of tension on the leash makes a huge difference in how Brew reacts. When his harness is tight around his chest, he lunges forward and wants to attack. When there is no tension he almost literally seems like a different dog, a bit nervous and timid, but in no way aggressive or threatening. This is not just a Brewster thing. I learned in an obedience class that all dogs respond to tension in the leash by becoming tense themselves. Understanding this basic little factoid was what made it possible to successfully introduce Brewster to Bertie Sue way back when. 

So at Dad's last visit, when Brewster felt the tension in the leash, it caused tension in him, and he wanted to lunge forward. I knew that I was causing the problem, but I couldn't make myself stop doing it. I knew if I released the tension, he would charge up at Dad for just a second, and the image of snarling Brewster was just too much. I wound up holding Brewster the entire time Dad was at the house, afraid to put him down.

Today I was determined to do better--not that Brewster would do better, that I would do better. When Bert ran up to give Dad his hello kisses, Brewster and I kept right on coming. Brewster tried to pull forward, but I kept coming, too, so the leash was slack. And I swear to you I saw this thought bubble forming over Brewster's head: "You aren't going to pull me back? You mean I could actually run up and bite him if I want to? Um . . . I think I'll go check out this piece of grass over here. Here's a rock that needs to be sniffed. This dandelion must be peed on immediately." And Brewster spent the rest of the visit ignoring Dad entirely, which is fine because Bertie Sue hands out enough luvins for four dogs. I promise, no one has ever felt neglected since Bert came to live here.

Hence, today's moral. You've heard the saying that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it, or something like that. So it is with dog training: The trick to improving a dog's behavior often lies in the handler's willingness to change his or her own behavior. Brewster didn't do a single thing differently at today's visit versus what he did two weeks ago. I was the one who changed my technique to get different results. And, whereas two weeks ago, I spent my time restraining an angry little demon dog, today I spent my time reassuring a nervous but generally calm and certainly not dangerous sweet little angel of whom I am very proud. Worth it.

A Knitter's Word Problem

Noelle accidentally knit an extra pattern repeat, including increases, on the yoke of the February Lady Sweater. She now has 235 stitches, but she only needs 227. Should she:

A. Tink back 470 stitches.

B. K2tog 8 times.

C. You know you can buy sweaters at Target, right?

Next week's problem: If Knitter 1 leaves the LYS at 10:45 am with a bag of Malabrigo and Knitter 2 leaves Michael's at 11:02 with a bag of Patons Kroy, they will have a violent and virulent disagreement on Ravelry about yarn quality at what time?

Here There Be Monsters, Y'all! No, really.

I've discovered the solution to the tepid second novel that critics' lore insists a promising young novelist will inevitably produce. Just wait and read the second novel first, and then go back and read the first. Earlier this year I read Arcadia, Lauren Groff's second novel. It was good. Darn good, in fact. So good it was one of the contenders in the Tournament of Books.

But I just finished The Monsters of Templeton, Groff's debut novel published in 2008, and it blew Arcadia right out of the water. Monsters has, well, a monster. A real one. We're not talking some metaphoric mental monster, but an actual, honest-to-god, lives-in-the-lake, and may-or-may-not-be-drowing-people monster.

And yes, okay, the monster is in fact symbolic of the monstrous secrets being kept in the town that surface at the same time as the monster. It wouldn't be lit-rah-cha if there wasn't any symbolism, of course. But Groff took what could've been an average novel on well-worn themes (daddy issues much?) and pulled the story-telling equivalent of lifting a rabbit out of a top hat. Except the rabbit isn't a boring old rabbit. It's a monster. A real, live monster, "huge, a heavy cream color that darkened to lemon in places. . . . It looked like a carp grown enormous, with a carp's fat belly and round eye, but with a long, articulated neck like a ballet dancer's and four finned legs, plump as a frog." When was the last time you got to read about a monster outside of a horror novel? Never, yeah?

On more, shall we say, traditional grounds, the novel is just as skilled as Arcadia. It looks at similar themes in terms of what constitutes a family, how perceptions and knowledge are formed, and what happens when a new reality intrudes. The main character, Willie Upton, searches her family's history to reveal her own "monsters," which for the most part aren't that monstrous, but really are only the departures from "authorized" history that happen in every family. As Willie explores her family's history back to her founding ancestors in the 18th century, Groff explores the quintessential American family in microcosm, and thus presents us with a portrait of our own American geniture. Although Willie is the protagonist who must live with the consequences, Groff lets each generation tell its own story and make its own confessions. Each generation's story is layered on another, not necessarily in chronological order, creating new understandings of what it means to be Willie Upton, and, for the rest of us, what it means to be a descendent of the American experiment—although that really sounds too grand for the immediate, intimate nature of this story.

As in Arcadia, Groff's prose is impressive. It manages to be exquisite and delicate without looking like she tried to make it exquisite and delicate. In the course of the week or so that I was reading Monsters, I found myself thinking in Groff's voice, the way you do when you're engrossed in a novel. Letting an author infect my brain like that is probably the highest praise I can give any writer.

So you must definitely read The Monsters of Templeton, not least because it is a relevant story told in beautiful prose. But mostly you must read Monsters because of the monster. How often as an adult do you get to read about a monster you can really believe in?

Oh, and the friendly if somewhat anal-retentive ghost. Did I mention the ghost? I can't believe I forgot to tell you about the ghost!

Because the hell-hound is adorbs.

You've read Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, right? You know, the comedic novel about Armageddon that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett coauthored and published 23 years ago? You've read that, right? I assume pretty much everyone except me has read it, and I just finished it, so I assume now everyone's read it.

But if for some reason you haven't gotten around to it yet, here are some reasons you might enjoy it:

• Gaiman and Pratchett apparently loathe Queen as much as an approaching-middle-aged Midwestern woman—that is to say, me.
• The vicious hell-hound sent from the underworld to accompany the preadolescent Antichrist has no choice but to become a lovable family pet—or else the Antichrist's dad won't let him keep it. "It had always wanted to jump up at people but, now, it realized that against all expectation it wanted to wag its tail at the same time."
• It's got a lot of Sunday Morning theology beat (and Friday Night and Saturday Afternoon, for that matter). The young Antichrist wonders, "I don't see what's so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset 'cos they act like people." Yeah, me neither.
• An entire room of telemarketers is consumed by a huge demonic maggot consisting of millions of tiny demonic maggots. Seems okay, yeah? 
•  A witch being burned at the stake manages to blow up her entire village in the process. Serves 'em right.
• The Antichrist is unusually practical for an 11-year-old, not to mention astonishingly polite: "I don't want any more world than I've got. Thank you all the same."  

 
Here are some reasons you might not enjoy it:

• There are so many references to Queen that you'll catch yourself singing "Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?" under your breath to yourself at least twice. And then you'll probably have to pay royalties to BMI or somebody.
• That's really all I've got. 

Next Stop: Amish Romance Novels

Letting your reading life be determined by your library holds queue makes for an interesting, if sometimes disconcerting, reading experience. There I was taking a leisurely and enjoyable stroll through Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, when NOS4A2, a story by Joe Hill about a vampire named Manx who feeds on children, showed up. It's a new release and therefore a two-week checkout with no renewal, so I dropped Agnes and found myself speeding down inscape highways and through mysterious covered bridges with Vic "Brat" McQueen as she tries to rescue her son from the evil Manx and his dominion, Christmasland. Talk about whiplash.

I can't say I particularly enjoy gruesome horror stories anymore, and certainly don't normally seek them out. But I had read an article about Hill and NOS4A2, and was curious enough to give it a shot. I wasn't going to beat myself up if I didn't finish, though. 

But here's the thing: Joe Hill is an excellent storyteller. It might be in his genes, since his dad is Stephen King. It's clear that Hill learned his craft by reading and re-reading and re-reading his dad. Would the similarities of style and tone have occurred to me if I hadn't known about the relationship? Probably. It really is very "Kingish." Hill acknowledges as much when he writes in the acknowledgments of "cruising [King's] back roads my whole life," and even said in an interview that he thought "it would be fun to goof on Stephen King a bit."

And here's another thing: Hill is better than his dad—or at least, shall we say, fresher. It's sort of like the difference between drinking the same iced tea you've been drinking your whole life, which is perfectly fine, and drinking raspberry iced tea with lemon—the same, but better, if you like that sort of thing.

But here's a third thing: The horrifying bits, unfortunately, are pretty much rote. You know in a book like this there's going to be a pretty fair amount of gore for anyone who inadvertently crosses Manx's path. And there is. When a dog is introduced midway through, you just know that dog isn't going to make it out alive, and it's probably going to be a pretty gruesome death. And it is. And that's where I lose patience. Yes, because it's a dog, and it shouldn't be any secret how I feel about thinking mildly hard-hearted thoughts about an animal, let alone actually hurting one, but also because there's plenty of real-life horror all around us, and fictional horror feels less like an escape and more like something that shouldn't be permitted to take up anymore space in my brain than absolutely necessary. That guy in Cleveland who kept those three women locked up for years? There's a child-eating vampire for you.

So, yes, Hill is a helluva writer and a helluva storyteller. By all means, check him out if you haven't already. I'm glad I did. But in general, although I'm not quite to the point of taking up Amish romance novels for my escapist reading, I think I'm past wanting to read about bone mallets and intestinal gristle for fun on rainy Sunday afternoons.